Twice-Shy Funds Still Smitten With 'Net's Big Three

Remember the old sleepover party s¿ance game, "Light as a feather, stiff as a board" -- when everyone used two fingers to inexplicably lift a recumbent person?

Well, the fund industry is engaged in a collective game with the big three Internet companies: No one hand is responsible for the levitation of Amazon.com(AMZN Quote), eBay(EBAY Quote) and Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) shares, but they have reached perilously high levels nonetheless.

Many market pundits assessing the meteoric rise of the Net's big three, as well as other phoenix-like Internet risers such as Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp(IACI Quote), notch it up to questionable momentum chasing by mutual fund managers. Indeed, "institutional herding" -- when mutual fund managers dog pile into (or out of) a hot stock or sector as a group -- clearly is at work in the Internet sector. ...